OUR LORD WHO GIVES LIFE

In the beginning, God made Adam and Adam became a living being when God breathed into him. This is described in Genesis 12 verse 7 as: "Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

Adam was a living being and in that state, chose to try run his life separate from God. It was this condition of rebellion against God that separated Adam and the whole successive human race from the life of God. We were equipped with minds and bodies that could operate in the coporeal realm but our spirits, which are the only parts of ourselves that could connect  with God, died.

God, in all His wisdom, began working on the gargantuan project of reconstituting the human race as creatures with living spirits again.

This task was four thousand years in the making. During that time, major portions of human history played out. Empires rose and fell, peoples were enslaved and freed, generations came and went and when finally everything was ready, a baby was born in an obscure village in an animal barn. 

That baby boy was the nexus of all of earth history and was the full preoccupation of heaven for all of existence.

That little boy carried the hope of all creation that we who were dead, could one day be made alive in spirit again and  rejoin our creator who loved us and who moved heaven and earth to redeem us from the thick darkness we were lost in.

Jesus, born in humble circumstance, lived to be the perfect sinless man. Exactly opposite from Adam, Jesus was perfectly obedient to God. Unlike Adam, Jesus could not be enticed by any scheme of darkness to compromise a single article of God's law. 

Having lived a perfect life of obedience to God's word and commands, He nevertheless gave His life up for crucifixion to take the punishment that Adam (and we who were born into His line) deserved. 

At His death, Jesus entered the strongholds of  hell but this cosmological injustice of placing a perfect man into the punishment of hell could not be contained by the flimsy  chains of hell and the crackling eye-searing light of His righteous glory shone forth and the denizens of hell suffered a shattering blow that left them burned and deformed.

The power of the resurrection of Jesus left hell permanently crippled and in disarray and in abject subjugation to the authority of Jesus Christ.

In this verse from John 10 verse 10, Jesus summarized all of world history

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Whereas the kingdom of darkness stole and killed and destroyed God's own people from Him, Jesus came to earth and by  His death,  redeemed us and gave us life and life that was even more abundant than what was alloted to us under Adam. 

Praise the holy name of Jesus. 

Amen